


the tabernacle (reconstructed)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters: Gold Rush!AU [41]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: ...but that is only in Chapter 1, California, Christmas Special, Feanor being...a lot to handle, Finally, Gen, I do a lot of valuable work here by establishing that NO ONE HAS BEARDS, I would tag someone else but it would be a spoiler, Implied Adult Content, Maedhros being repressed AF, Peril, Thank you for understanding, WE'RE HERE WE'RE HERE, also history will be made up COMPLETELY from this point out, as Tolkien (and I) intended, character and relationship tags to be added, everyone else being similarly problematic and lovable, fairytale references, introductions, mature themes, mining, title from Siken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-04 13:22:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18344537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: This is the land of plenty (or something like that).





	1. Caranthir

The ground in California is as hard as any other ground.

Caranthir wakes for his watch—the second—only to find that Maglor and Maedhros are both awake and sitting by the firepit.

“Fifty miles more,” Maglor is saying, as if he does not believe it. “And we will have…we will have  _arrived_.”

Maedhros leans his chin on his hand. “Athair thinks we should rest the horses for a few days.”

“Did you know,” Maglor asks dreamily, “That  _Mariposa_  means butterfly in both Spanish and Portuguese?”

He does not speak either of these languages, Caranthir knows, and yet it would be like Maglor to learn the word for  _butterfly_ in every one he could.

“There are no butterflies here now,” he says bluntly, joining them by the fire. That much should be obvious; it is December.

Since it is past midnight, it is also Christmas Eve.

Maedhros chuckles. “Maglor alone can see them, then.” He looks a little haggard, but they all do—the two months since Beleriand have been full of hardship. Mountains and desert and mountains again. Some of the horses died of exertion, with deep-throated groans and stumbled last steps. Athair ordered that nothing be wasted; they salvaged the meat before it rotted.

Caranthir had known the names of some of their scanty dinners, and had to cover his mouth with his hand to force himself to swallow the leathery chunks.

Of course, Athair said that if they were disgusted by it, they were not yet on the verge of famine, and they should take it as a good sign.

The wagons they sold at Carson City, before they braved the Sierra Nevada. The supplies were parceled between them, carried on the remaining horses, and on their backs.

 _Strong arms_ , said Maedhros to the twins, even when he took extra burdens himself.

To Caranthir, the desert was hell. Yet it was the mountains—beautiful and fearsome, meant to kill and crush what could not withstand them—that brought them grief.

Jethro and his horse took a tumble at the edge of a precipice, and were just as swiftly gone.

 _A good lad_ , Galway said in a choked voice, when the whole party gathered and Celegorm, who had been riding beside him, shared the dreadful news. Maedhros, who had scouted Jethro as a companion in the first place, looked very sick and pale, his lips pressed in a bloodless line.

There was no funeral because there was no body. Athair said,  _We must press on_. The forty men who rode with them might as well have considered him a king, so faithfully did they heed his every word—and these words, too. Caranthir alone hung back to build a cairn of stones at the side of the trail, almost daring to think,  _to hell with Athair_. Curufin passed him with a sly smile on his thin face.

 _Now?_ He asked.  _Now, you bury the dead?_

 _He was one of ours_ , Caranthir answered angrily, and then mounted again to ride on, following as the rest did.

There had only been one mutiny. When water ran short in the desert, blame spread like flames to dry grass. The man drew his weapon, but Athair leveled him with a shot to the center of his forehead, before he’d even had time to aim it.

Caranthir doesn’t consider  _that_  a grief, though he wishes he had been quicker about covering the twins’ eyes.

The west has changed them all. If he were to say such a thing aloud, some would scoff and others would stare, for it is almost too well known to be said. Yet Caranthir, for his part, does not think of the Bridge—at least, not so much as he used to—when he thinks of endings. In those first days, they were all so afraid, so driven wild, so bloodstained, that they did not even know who they were. They clung to each other and to the simple act of staying alive. It is these last miles, brutal and unforgiving, that have answered the question more definitively.

His brothers seem to have decided who they are.

Caranthir scarcely recognizes them.

He jolts a bit when Maedhros nudges a cup of hot coffee into his hands. Maglor has been carrying the pot in his pack, fiercely protective of it in a way that Caranthir can understand, since he has done the same with his box of treasures.

Maglor has had less luck with treasures; his beloved clairséach cracked in two when they braved the mountain pass. He wept and beat his fists against the rocks, because that is Maglor, even now. His blood is hot like Athair’s, but his heart is much too soft. The men stopped to stare until Maedhros pinned Maglor’s arms, forced him against the shoulder of the stone, and said, with awful, quiet firmness,  _You cannot do this_.

Yes, Caranthir realizes. It is Maedhros he no longer knows.

He drinks the coffee and sorts about for his courage.

“You can let Maedhros take your watch, Caranthir,” Maglor says. “Since he will not sleep, anyway.” He speaks a little acidly; Caranthir imagines that it is because his pleading and coaxing has less and less effect on Maedhros these days, Maedhros who smiles woodenly and does only as Athair commands, eating and sleeping only enough to get by.

No more, no less.  

“Neither will you,  _cano_ ,” Maedhros points out gently.

Caranthir says, “It is Christmas tomorrow.”

He feels, almost more than he sees, how his older brothers look at him. For a fraction of a second Maedhros’s stoic resolve breaks. A hairline fracture—through it, Caranthir could likely see the past. He does not have long enough to make certain.

“I suppose it may be.” Maedhros’s eyebrows twitch in assent, and he kicks a stray ember towards the bed of coals. “Celegorm gave up his mapping efforts long ago, but you seem more diligent with the calendar.”

Maglor’s face is troubled.

“I should like us to do something for the twins,” Caranthir says. He knows that the hierarchy does not favor him; he is not Athair’s right hand, as Maedhros is, nor Maedhros’s trusted confidant, as Maglor is, nor even Celegorm, who is more and more often drawn into private councils…

 _…since he killed a man_.

No, Caranthir is still an almost-child in their eyes, and no doubt they—even Maedhros, who used to smile with light and laughter in his gaze—believe his motive to be selfish.

The very thought makes him flush with anger. Would they say so if they knew he had made room in his pack for a knotted kerchief of hard candy, bought with his own precious coins in Beleriand? The twins will have  _that_  tomorrow, if they have nothing else.

“Caranthir,” Maedhros says slowly, “We can do nothing for them. We have…” He bites his lip. Caranthir narrows his eyes, for the tic, at least, is familiar. “Athair is right. They must grow up, too.”

Something happened to him. Caranthir knows it could be counted in seven bullets, knows it could be counted in ashes falling from the sky. But he counts it, too, in the strange mismatched nights during which Maedhros left camp to run Athair’s errands. He counts it in that night spent at Beleriand, when Caranthir feared Maedhros might not come back at all.

 _Grow up?_  he wants to ask, bitter and as cruel as Curufin.  _I have heard you sobbing in your sleep_. He does not.

“They are turning fourteen in five days, in case you have forgotten that too,” he chooses to say instead, and he sets the undrunk cup aside to stalk back to his bed. Let them have his watch after all.

He waits for Maglor to come and see what is wrong, or for Maedhros to confide in him as he used to, but they do not follow him.

Athair is the only one who has the privilege of followers, now.

 

Last Christmas, considered in its own right, was not one of their best. It was the first Christmas without a box of gifts from Grandfather—but none of them minded the absence of the gifts. They minded the fact that Grandfather was dead. Athair, who had been his usual tireless self for months—albeit with less warmth behind his eyes—took himself to his study and stayed there all day, speaking to no one. He did not even attend Mass.

“Sometimes I’d _rather_ he drink,” Mother said angrily, slamming pans in the kitchen. “Disgusting habit though it is.”

Maedhros blushed and mumbled some placation.

Caranthir had no reason to know then, as he does now, that Maedhros drinks everything he can get his hands on.

The thought is an unkind one, _another_ unkind one, against the brother whom he loves best.

When his brothers changed, did he change too?

 

Forests are a welcome reprieve from rock and sand and merciless elements, though the trees here are entirely different from those in the east. These stand like solemn giants, reaching for the winter sky. In the afternoon, Caranthir rests his hand against unknown bark and breathes in the sharp tang of their sticky lifeblood. He almost asks Celegorm what sort they are, but no, Celegorm is planning his next hunt and would have no patience for such a question.

Celegorm has a bow, now, from the Paiute people they met at the ridge of the mountains. He traded the silver Saint Francis medal he wore around his neck for a curve of horn strung with deer sinew, and the chain for a quiver of arrows.

Caranthir, when he saw the exchange, clutched his own medal close. He was named at baptism for Saint Dominic, patron of the Rosary, and the medal Athair made from Mother’s pen-and-ink design is something he would never, ever give up.

(Maedhros’s medal disappeared, not long after the bridge. Celegorm handed his over as if it was just another coin.)

Cousin Turgon used to say that Celegorm was _wild_. Caranthir wonders what Turgon would say if he could see Celegorm now, his hair a golden mane flowing beneath his tipped-back hat, his skin darkened by sun so that his eyes stand out bluer than ever. Celegorm passed his nineteenth birthday in August—a day noted only by Caranthir—and he no longer looks like a boy.

They called Finrod a mountain man when he first came back. They look little better now. Caranthir submits to Maglor’s attempts to keep his hair reasonably short and neat, along with that of the twins, but it seems a feeble attempt at civilization when they have all become wiry and strong and ragged with traveling. Maedhros’s hair is like a bright banner on his shoulders, though he—like Athair—has never grown a beard. Celegorm tried to grow one, and it was a miserable attempt, quickly vanquished by Curufin and a straight razor in the dead of night.

An act of mercy, Curufin called it. Curufin is sharp as a razorblade himself, but he can be amusing. Caranthir will admit that in the privacy of his own mind.

He lays on his back now, amid the cool red needles.  _Mariposa_ , he thinks, turning the word and over. Christmas needs no butterflies, but it does need  _something_. Caranthir’s eyes sting.

“Caranthir!”

That is Athair’s voice. He scrambles to his feet, trousers pricked through with little quills, and swipes his sleeve over his eyes just in case.

The horses are tethered to stakes in the ground, since most of the trees are too thick to tie a rope around. Athair has removed their packs, with the twins helping, and now Caranthir sees that it is his own pack in Athair’s hands. He sees, too, that the pack has fallen open.

“What,” Athair asks in a strange voice, “Is this?”

It is one of Mother’s paint-jars.

Their family camp is a little apart from the others, as it often is. There are no strangers here to listen as Caranthir tries to find the words to explain that yes, he combed through the pack that Mother left—the one with little comforts of home—and took what seemed best to him.

That he has carried those paint-jars a thousand miles, useless as they are, for the same reason that Maglor still carries the pieces of his ruined harp.

_Hope._

“It is mine,” he says, and across the fire-circle, Curufin’s gaze shifts shrewdly between his father and his next-eldest brother, as if he is memorizing them both.

“It’s—” Amrod begins, but Amras elbows him.

“C’mon, dummy. There’s sap-gum to chew.”

Athair is momentarily distracted. “Do not eat anything you have not first shown to Celegorm,” he chides, and Caranthir is sorely tempted to reach forward and pluck the little jar—emerald green—from his hand and return it to the safety of his pack or pocket.

He knows better than to do this, though.

Slowly, Athair turns back, collecting the threads of the conversation. “Yours, you say.”

Athair bought those jars for Mother, long ago. He recognizes them. Caranthir is sure of it.

Caranthir swallows. He wonders if this is how Maedhros began his endless lies; for everyone else’s good. “Yes,” he says. “Mine.”

 

Maglor seeks him out before supper, when Caranthir has been tasked with the unpleasant business of plucking the partridge Huan brought back in his jaws.

“I have been thinking,” Maglor says, folding his arms over his chest. Of course. Maglor is not Maedhros, and he never offers to help with tasks he dislikes.

Not since home, at least. Not since Mother.

“Huh.” It’s not meant to be an encouragement, exactly.

“About Christmas.” Maglor’s hair is longer, too, and it falls over his brow and behind his ears in what he doubtless thinks is a romantic fashion. If Maglor could grow a beard—which he probably can’t, since not even Grandfather Finwe could, and he was much manlier than Maglor—it would be a little pointed goatee. Caranthir smirks at the thought, and then takes in the full weight of Maglor’s words.

“Christmas.”

“What you said. The twins. I think…” Maglor presses his lips together. “We have nearly nothing, Caranthir, but it grieves me to not—”

“Live as human beings, with feasts and holy days? I should think so.”

Maglor all but gapes in surprise. “Is that what you think of us now?” He looks nervous, as though Caranthir has seen too much—and he has. He has seen men die at his father’s hands, his brothers’ hands, and he has seen what came afterwards.

 _What I think does not matter_. “What did you have in mind?” He tries to make it sound like a peace offering.

“I…can sort through my things for some little gifts,” Maglor muses, tucking his hands in is pockets. There is a scar across the back of his left hand that is still pink; he burned himself while cooking, a week ago now. Caranthir finds it strange that Maglor still manages to injure himself in such…ordinary ways, when they have faced far greater perils than a campfire.

“ _I_ have gifts for them.”

“Really? From—”

“From Beleriand,” Caranthir says gruffly. He does not want to slip into the child’s role before Maglor’s eyes again, and so he scowls, too, to keep the conversation at arms’ length. “A few sweets. Nothing more.”

Maglor’s dewy eyes widen. “So you have planned this,” he says softly. “For two months?”

“Yes.” Caranthir jerks a tuft of feathers ruthlessly from the partridge’s breast. “But it would be a better Christmas with carols.” He does not look at Maglor when he says this, to give Maglor a moment for any flash of regret or grief.

“My harp,” Maglor murmurs, just as Caranthir expected. “I have not had time to mend…”

“You have your whistle. And your tongue.”

“Yes.”

“Then that is enough.” Caranthir pulls too hard this time, and the thin bird-skin tears a little. He sees the bloody muscle beneath and shivers despite himself. “But we will have to be quiet about it.”

Maglor lifts his gaze, as if the whole scene is too common for the poignancy of what he feels, and he must consider the changing colors of the sky, the fronded branches of trees, before he can know quite what he will say next.

“I wish it were not so,” Maglor says at last. “But it is. We will not disturb—Athair.”

(They are both thinking of Maedhros.)

 

Celegorm and a few of the other men brought back more than the partridge; two deer are dressed and roasted at the center of the campsites. They eat late, however, because Athair insisted that the firepit be dug deeply and the ground around it wetted.

No one complained, but he showed them his reasoning anyway, scattering a handful of sap-sticky needles into the fire, where they blazed up at once.  

“Intriguing,” Curufin murmurs, tying a few into a rag that might once have been a handkerchief.

After the meal—in which Caranthir watches Maglor, and Maglor watches Maedhros, and Maedhros stares at his plate, dully calm—Maglor tells Athair that the twins wish to see the starlight.

“May we walk to the edge of the trees?” he asks. It is not far away, and they might have camped on open ground, but Athair insisted that they stay better concealed. _Better defensible_ , he said, and everyone—from the miner-men to Maedhros to Amrod—could imagine well enough what he meant.

Athair frowns, and Caranthir knows that all of his brothers are listening, whether they guess the occasion for such a request or not. “Do you expect different stars here than in the mountains, Kanafinwe?”

Caranthir wonders at Athair’s mood; it is rare that he calls them by their middle names, though he was the one who chose them.

Athair chose almost all their names.

“We shall be quiet,” Maglor says, “And stay no longer than half an hour. We shall not step beyond the shadows of the trees.”

Caranthir has seen the other men writing letters, staring at photographs. Has heard them speaking of their families. He is right; it is Christmas tomorrow. It is only his own family who pretends not to know.

A muscle in Athair’s jaw twitches. “Not beyond the shadows,” he warns, and Maglor nods to the twins, who leap up and trail after him.

Caranthir puts down his plate for Huan to lick clean. His boots leave no tracks in the needles; at least not one he can perceive. Likely Celegorm would be able to hunt him down and shoot him in the throat if he very much wanted to.

At the border of the grove, Maglor stands with one hand in each of the twins’. There is not much light, but what light there is, they stand dark against.

Caranthir joins them. The hard candy is a lump in his pocket.

“It is Christmas tomorrow,” Maglor tells Amrod and Amras. And then, very softly, in his voice that Mother used to say was like the angels’ voices—

—though three other sons of hers were named for angels, and he was not among them—

—he sings—

It is very still. Winds could rage and tear here. They did in the deserts. They did in the mountains. But Caranthir feels nothing tonight, not even a breeze, to cool the tears on his cheeks. He waits to sing until the twins’ warbling efforts have mingled with Maglor’s steady tenor—

_Hark, the herald angels sing…_

And they sing, and they stand, and there are stars here, the same as they were and yet not so, for they are always viewed in the light of different sorrows.

When they have run through the carols that were in Mother’s little red book at home, and the half-hour is nearly passed—by Caranthir’s unwilling count—he unwraps his treasure.

“Bully,” the twins say, their voices a little hoarse and wispy from exertion, and they jam the sweets into their cheeks as Maglor pats their hair and scolds,

“You will make yourselves sick.”

“Here is a piece for you, then,” Amras says, shoving one into Maglor’s palm. “And for you, Caranthir.”

“Yes, for you,” Amrod chimes in, adding one of his own.

The candies are lemony, once Caranthir sucks past the salt of dust that films them. The twins do not mention it.

He does not know what else to say so he leaves Christmas at the border of trees, and walks back to camp before they do.

He sees a flash of movement. It is Maedhros, turning away from where he stood just out of sight of their little gathering, his arms wrapped around his chest and his face set with longing. His swift strides outpace Caranthir’s, forestalling questions.

Caranthir lets him go.


	2. Celegorm

Huan’s whine sounds more like a growl this time, and Celegorm sits up, hand resting on the hound’s taut shoulder.

“What is it, boy?”

Huan growls again.

Celegorm can hear nothing, but he knows better than to trust his own lesser senses.

He rises, feeling about for his gun, which has nosed its barrel into the dense moss on which he made his bed. He cleans it quickly against his ragged shirttail; he shall have to be more careful of it. Maybe if he kept it holstered at his hip at night—but no, he always tosses in his sleep, and would likely find a hole shot through his thigh the next morning.

Huan is on four stiff legs now, his spine arched and ready for a hunt.

Celegorm bids him to stay with a shake of his finger, and goes to wake Maedhros.

Waking Maedhros is a cautious business these days. Celegorm might remember, if he allowed himself the luxury, the days when Maedhros would return from school and they would greet him in the morning by leaping onto his bed—Celegorm and Caranthir stealing his pillows, the twins burrowing under his blankets like moles. 

Now, when his eldest brother  _does_  sleep, a touch seems unwelcome at first, as though he cringes from the unknown. Only when his eyes sharpen to alertness does the wire-tension leave him.

The day may come, Celegorm supposes, when Maedhros would rather not be touched at all.

He hovers guiltily, plagued by these unwilling remembrances and by his realization that Maedhros’s features are slack and peaceful for once. It makes him look almost like the twins.

Celegorm glances back at Huan, and steels himself to shake his brother's shoulder.

There it is—the silent struggle, when Maedhros’s eyes flare open and he fights as if to ward off hands that would hold him down and hurt him. If Celegorm suspects the root of such unconscious fears, he is man enough not to mention it.

Maedhros himself seems fearless in the light of day.

And though it is night now—past midnight, with Homer keeping watch some twenty yards away—Maedhros sits up and pushes his hair back from his face, the panic gone (or hidden) in an instant.

Celegorm, sitting back on his heels, presses a finger to his lips, then tilts his head towards Huan.

Maedhros understands at once. He gets up, having no need to hunt for  _his_  gun, and together they tread silently where the hound leads.

The trees— _sequoias_ , Celegorm knows, from his own study and Finrod’s willing discussions, of a time long gone—are arrayed in a maze of pillars painted pitchy under the flat dark sky. Celegorm blinks, wishing he had Huan’s sharpened vision.

They are heading south of the camp, towards the edge of the forest. Huan pauses, sniffing the wind, and then lowers his muzzle to poke among the banked needles.

Celegorm crouches down beside him. Huan begins to dig.

Maedhros taps him on the shoulder, and makes a gesture that Celegorm recognizes. He is not surprised, then, when his older brother seemingly melts into the night, taking up sentry position in the shelter of one of the enormous tree-trunks.

Huan turns something up. After a moment, Celegorm recognizes it for what it is: a carcass. Bird bones, picked almost clean and buried. A partridge, maybe, or a small grouse. Celegorm touches a spot of blood between the ribs. It’s still fresh. The meat was cut away, as with a knife.

 _Someone else is here._ Huan is snuffling at the bones, but he knows not to eat them. The hairs on the back of Celegorm’s neck rise up. Straining his eyes, he stares into the gloomy shadows.

The shadows move.

Celegorm stands, hand close to his holster. It is hard to recognize the shape that draws near as a man at first; it is too bulky about the shoulders. But the clouds have cleared away and the moon is shining, and in a spot of that moonlight, Celegorm sees—it  _is_  a man after all, and instead of a long coat he wears an opulent mass of furs wreathed around him.

His eyes are fixed on Celegorm—it is too dark to see them, but they are sunken in a pale, keen face. The hair that stretches past his shoulders, surprisingly sleek, is pale too. It is lighter than Celegorm’s own.

Celegorm feels with creeping certainty that the man saw Celegorm before Celegorm saw him.

Huan lets out yet another growl.

“Mind your whelp,” says the man. “I almost mistook him for a wolf.” His voice has an accent that is hard to place. French, perhaps? Whatever it is, it lends his voice an edge that makes Celegorm wish he could flatten his ears against his skull as Huan does.  

“Who are you?” Celegorm demands. “Why are you following— _me_?” He cannot admit to an  _us_. He cannot admit to anything, traipsing blindly into the unknown. He is glad, now, that he woke Maedhros, and did not come here alone as he first intended.

“Strangers ought not to be so brash,” the man answers. “Or have you met no Indians? Such suspicions will win you an arrow in the gullet.”

“My hound caught wind of your scent.” Celegorm will not be swayed. “You were circling.”

“Oh—like a vulture?” The man smiles, and his teeth are lighter than his hair and his face and Celegorm dislikes all the silver moonlight on him, drowned out though it is by the softness of his fur mantle.  He dislikes also the idea of a  _vulture_ —it makes him think of the buried bones.

Celegorm puffs his chest. He’s not a fool—well, not mostly, or maybe he is a little, but not over something like this. He’s had good instincts all his life. He can’t seem to be afraid, even if he hopes that the stranger thinks he is alone. “Get gone from this place within the hour,” he says. “I will not share my campground.”

“Yet you share it with forty others. Or do you pretend that they belong to a third party that we both should interrupt?” The stranger’s voice is rich with amusement now. “No, young one. I think I will keep to my own quarters in this fine forest, and you may slink back to yours.”

 _He counted us_. Celegorm narrows his eyes.

“Yet first,” the man muses, half to himself, “I shall teach a lesson to you and your cur. How does that sound?” At his belt, Celegorm sees a coiled whip and a Bowie knife. But the man reaches for neither of these; instead, he lifts a pipe almost the length of Maglor’s tin-whistle to his lips—

—and  _yelps_ , the first real human sound he has made, when a shot cracks the night air and the pipe is blasted from his hands.

 _Maedhros_ , Celegorm realizes, and is glad that it is too dark for a flush to be seen on his cheeks. He was too interested and afraid at once, and that permitted him to be distracted, as the deer are when they see him and Huan lying very still with the scenery, in the pause of a moment that always leads them to their doom. Even if his instincts are good, his reflexes still fail him.

Not so Maedhros, stepping out into moonlight that glints on his hair like running water.

“Strangers ought not to be so brash,” he drawls, and the pale man stands motionless as Maedhros advances, his gun clasped in his hands, ready for another round of fire.

“You travel in pairs,” the man observes. “And you honor a weary traveler with such attention,  _Irishman_.”

The word is said with disdain and Maedhros grins. When he grins, he looks like Athair, because they all have Athair’s grin, if not his real smile. The grin is just another blade, whetted to deadliness.

“If you wished not to be hunted like one of your own trophies,” Maedhros says, indicating the pelts with a deceptively lazy flourish of his gun, “You would not admit to knowing so much about us.”

“I admit to nothing.”

Celegorm wants to get a closer look at the man’s eyes. It matters, somehow, that he know their color and the mood that lurks within them.

Maedhros tips his head as if listening, and there  _are_ sounds of voices now, of running feet in the forest. A gunshot will do that. Celegorm hopes desperately that it was not a mistake, for him to wake his brother and venture out into the dark.

Maedhros says, “Yet you threatened my brother. No sudden moves, if you please.” His stride does not falter.

The man obeys in silence, and Celegorm ceases his worrying to move in, too, gun ready. “What should we do with him?”

For some reason, this makes the stranger laugh.

“He wishes to see our camp,” Maedhros says, with an imperious shrug. “So he shall.” To the man, he says, “Kneel, hands over your head. My trigger is sometimes quicker than my temper.”

The man kneels. He lifts hands that bear silver-smooth scars like those on Athair’s hands—old burns, Celegorm recognizes, common to metal-workers.

“Bind his hands,” Maedhros orders. Athair and the rest will find them in another moment, but for now, Celegorm revels in the simplicity of the triumph: this is _their_ catch, his and Maedhros’s and Huan’s.

His brother looks very beautiful and very terrible in the moon-glow. Celegorm decides that he was wrong: despite everything, Maedhros is fearless at night as well.

“I have no rope,” he says, and Maedhros says,

“The whip at his belt will serve.” He keeps his aim unwavering from the stranger’s forehead.

Celegorm leans in, holding his breath against the dead sweetness of the pelts, the rush of heat from the man’s nostrils, flared like those of a horse—

—and the man lunges quickly, but Maedhros is once again the quicker of the two, his hand fisting in the stranger's pale hair, jerking his head back and keeping him from butting his skull against Celegorm’s.

“I believe,” Maedhros reflects, “that I said _no_ _sudden_ _moves_.”

Celegorm can see the man’s eyes. They are so light amber as almost to be golden, and fixed as they are now, on Maedhros’s face, they flicker hot with hatred.

Celegorm’s hands shake a little as he unfastens the whip and winds it around the stranger's wrists. It is crafted of braided leather, and there is a stiffness to it that reveals itself by flaking away on Celegorm’s fingers when he knots it: dried blood.

“What is the meaning of this?” rings Athair’s voice, and he and Maglor and Caranthir and half-a-dozen of the miner-men burst through the trees, guns drawn.

“A would-be intruder,” Maedhros answers. “Huan alerted us to him. He has not been friendly.”

“My sons have left you alive,” Athair says coldly, addressing the stranger on his knees. “Prove to me that their mercy was worthwhile.”

The man’s shoulders slump, his hair still threaded through Maedhros’s fingers, and he breathes in great shuddering gasps. “Forgive me, Feanor,” he says. “I could not be certain until I saw you. I hoped—”

Athair’s eyes narrow and his mouth flattens in a taut line. A formidable expression, but one that Celegorm recognizes as the closest Athair ever comes to uncertainty.

“How do you know my name?”

“Rumil sent me.”

Athair is silent, though Celegorm knows that all his sons, at least, look swiftly at him. Rumil is the one they will meet in Mithrim, some fifty miles south. Rumil is the one whom Athair has trusted, at times, more than his own family.

“Rumil the mapmaker.” The man’s voice is desperate, and Celegorm twitches his head as Huan might, struck by a sound gone wrong. This man—this stranger with his golden eyes—does not seem the type to be _desperate_ , yet Celegorm knows not to interrupt. Not when Athair holds the (forest) floor.

“List every name you wish,” Athair replies, with a scornful shrug. What he says next is a mystery—swift words in a language that Celegorm does not know. It is smooth and cunning and wild, as are all of Athair’s works. Celegorm has seen Athair and Curufin scratching swooping lines of coded script in ink. They hid the paper away when they saw Celegorm standing near, and although it stung him, wasp-sharp, he could not carry the hurt forever—since what use would he be, with writing of any kind? What risk?

Athair used to say that Celegorm could not write even his own name with any charm.

So. These words, which Athair speaks in challenge or warning, are certainly of Athair’s make, of Athair’s mystery. But the stranger’s eyes kindle, and he answers swiftly in the same tongue.

Athair blanches, and Celegorm hates to see Athair in doubt, just as he hates all the world in the seconds after Maedhros first wakes. Just as he hates the metal shine of Curufin’s gaze, these days.

“Very well,” Athair says. “You know the tongue. Do you think that will be enough? Do you think I trust a man unvouched for?”

“Rumil took that risk, and many others. The roads are being watched. You were never meant to get this far, by…” The man’s eyes shift from side to side. Celegorm does not trust those eyes. He is sure Athair does not either. “I cannot speak that name, here. Or anywhere.”

Some moments—moments in the grass, with Huan and the deer’s indecision—last longer than others. Celegorm looks at Maedhros, who is certainly listening for Athair’s order, though he does not turn his gaze, and does not release his captive.

“We shall bring him with us,” Athair decides at last, “And see how long his story holds.”

 

There is one breath, that the man takes, just as they enter camp—a breath like he savors some toothsome scent. Then it is back to slump-shouldered snuffling.

Celegorm shivers.

 

“Do you trust him?” he asks Maedhros.

“Of course not.” Maedhros holsters his gun, and stares at his hands. Maglor has gone to watch over the twins; Caranthir and Curufin are both waiting to be told what to do. “Athair doesn’t either, don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t worrying,” Celegorm answers, piqued. Their shared triumph has been shifted to others' keep; the stranger is now bound at the wrists and ankles, and two men stand over him, armed. One holds a lantern, and the light casts curious shadows.

The stranger keeps his head low, smooth hair tangled and curtaining his cheeks. Celegorm cannot see the glint of his gaze, but he knows that they are being watched. All of them.

He remembers, suddenly—

“Huan and I will be right back,” he tells Maedhros, and Maedhros says,

“Ho, Celegorm—”

“Not far! I shall whistle if there are any more fur trappers around these parts.”

“Maedhros!” Athair calls, and that is just enough distraction.

 

Here is what Celegorm finds, in the trampled moss, after half an hour of searching with the help of Huan’s faithful nose:

A slender pipe, with a needle of a dart dipped in something dark, something Celegorm knows not to touch. He sniffs it instead, and it is— _familiar_ —only he cannot quite place it, it is buried in some memory, not so much of danger, yet still of fear—

Celegorm turns the dart in his fingers. The forest around him might as well be silent, for all that he listens to the murmurs of the camp, the somnambulant chorus of the trees scraping branch lightly against branch.

Huan listens for him, at times like this.

And Celegorm remembers, where last he caught this scent: on Maedhros’s skin, that dreadful night outside of Beleriand, when Celegorm cleaned and patched a wound so ugly he asked no questions of its making.

 

(Celegorm runs.)

 

Celegorm runs, but not fast enough to outpace fire and blood.

He leapt from his bonds, Galway said. _Snakelike, almost_ , and he stabbed the nearest guard with a knife so narrow-bladed it had escaped the rough search they made of him. _Used it to cut his bonds too, I’ll deem_ —this, while the dead man’s brother stooped, choking back a sob, to brush the staring eyes closed.

The lantern—yes, he leapt for the guard with the lantern—had broken over the sticky needles, and in the spread of the flames, he darted to one of the horses tethered nearby.

Athair was only a dozen yards away.

They smothered the fire with earth and water. The forest looks the same.

 “It happened so fast,” Galway says, hoarse from the smoke. He might mean the words in comfort.

Celegorm flinches, now, even before the rage fans bright in Athair’s eyes. “We let him slip through our fingers!” he cries. “A spy and a murderer.” His fists are so tightly clenched that in the light of the remaining lanterns, Celegorm can see every tendon, stretched to snapping.

 

 _We knew_ , Celegorm thinks. He and Maedhros and yes, even Huan. Why did they let him speak? Why did they bring him to the heart of the thing he hunted?

He cannot look at Athair any longer, cannot think of the sick-sharp gleam of amber eyes. The rest of his brothers are near, and Curufin is trailing nearest of all, but Celegorm looks at Maedhros instead, Maedhros, who, despite himself, always wears his shame like a badge of honor.

(Celegorm does not understand his own thoughts, sometimes.)

“Maedhros,” he says, low enough that only his oldest brother may hear.

Maedhros turns his face away. Quietly, he says, “I should have shot him.”


	3. Curufin

In the attic at Formenos, there is a green-bound book, split down the spine. Aredhel threw it at Celegorm’s head, once, and Celegorm ducked, and it struck the wall behind him. For his part, Curufin was flat on his stomach, carefully arranging the strategical positioning of a dozen lead soldiers. The soldiers scattered under Celegorm’s foot, when he chased their shrieking cousin up and down the floorboards.

Such occurrences were common, once upon a time.

In the book—which they pored over together at other times, times when Aredhel and Celegorm were communicating with relatively civil words rather than a mélange of fists and insults—there was a story about a horse whose head was nailed to a gate.

 _Falada_ , that was the name. And Aredhel suggested that the name be given to the new foal—it being Celegorm’s turn to choose—but Celegorm said it was bad luck.

 

In the desert, Curufin’s horse ( _Achilles_ , that was _his_ name) could bear the weight no longer, and he fell forward on his knees. Curufin pitched over his head into the sand, which was wickedly soft and sinking. The sand was torture to ride over, comfortable only for sleep—and even then, they woke with gritty eyes and tongues.

Strips of Achilles’ flesh were roasted over the fire that night, with Maglor and Jethro sweating as they turned the spits. Curufin stared at Achille’s severed head, slouched like an overturned boot, only far grislier.

Of course, Curufin thought, it would be _his_ horse.

 

They break camp as soon as the man’s body is laid to rest in the firepit, covered by soil and red needles, cut branches and an old cloak.

 _Laid to rest_ , Curufin thinks, is a strange phrase. He rather believes that a painful death remains so forever. How much rest can one find in a slit throat, in the sticky cling of spilled blood? This man was afraid when he died. Most men are, even when it is not a feral stranger striking fast who kills them.

They break camp, and they ride harder, for days, than they have since the bridge burned and Curufin—

—leans down, cheek pressed against the rough mane that is not Achilles’ mane, and grins into the wind.

 

Athair leads them along the hem of the forest, for though it is still the dark, the moon is bright and they have learned well that they do not move undetected. Curufin digs in his spurs—these, like every part of him, made by Athair—and draws almost level with Athair’s mount. Not because he expects Athair to speak, to confide, when the wind and his temper are high, but because Curufin would always choose this: peril, and his father’s side.

He stood by Athair’s side, too, the day that Athair killed the rangy sheep-farmer who had grumbled from the beginning, who accused Athair of being a madman when the water ran low on the ninth desert day.

Curufin did not flinch when Athair’s bullet splattered the man’s brains out among the ruins of his cratered skull, but it was Maedhros whom Athair turned to, once the body stopped twitching.

Maedhros, always Maedhros.

 _Any man among you who would follow him, speak now_ , Athair said, to all those gathered. All those breathing. His gun still smoked, his voice rang like a hammer. Curufin burned his hand on the barrel of a pistol once, for the heat of metal is a brutal, tempting thing. _Distrust me if you will, as a man of mercy—but do not doubt my vengeance. I go west to claim freedom from the name of profit. I go west to stand ahead of the injustice of Melkor Bauglir—yes, you know him. You all have heard of the baron of New York. He slaughtered my father. He hunted my family._ Then Athair paused, with his eyes trapping Maedhros’s gaze as only he could. _He marred my eldest son._

To Maedhros, he said, _if you would?_ and Maedhros spent only a flash of a moment looking (to Curufin) very much like a frightened horse, so wide were his eyes. Then he unfastened coat and collar both, and drew them aside with the red fall of his hair to show the still-raw ring against the pale, flecked skin above his clavicle.

Curufin has bitten enough of his brothers—in childhood—to recognize such a scar.

 

Athair stares straight ahead, along these miles, just as he does when he fires straight and sober. Curufin has never doubted Athair’s love for him, nor his own for Athair. They are not so much father and son as they are the continuation of a legacy. Athair himself has said that.

Curufin stares straight ahead too, then, but sometimes he looks from the corners of his eyes, and wonders if Athair should have fired faster.

But no, it was Maedhros and Celegorm who captured him, and Maedhros who had the chance.

Maedhros, always Maedhros.

 

(What was the language that the stranger spoke, which Athair spoke first? Curufin was supposed to wait back at the camp with the twins, but he followed the search-party, slinking between the wide tree-trunks, and he heard. He heard and saw everything.)

(Curufin has begun to learn the Tengwar script—he is a quick study, and already knows more, sooner, than Athair perhaps intends—but there are still so many secrets that his father holds fast.

The diamond that began it all is one; this language feels more like an ending.)

 

They halt with surprising abruptness, at the bank of a river that is spanned by a single-file bridge. The bridge, Curufin realizes, is made of metal.

“Rumil has gathered many masters of craft,” Athair says, canting his head to the side. His hair falls from behind his ear; it is almost as long as Maedhros’s now, and longer than Curufin’s, which grows smooth and straight and slow.

Curufin was already sitting up ramrod-proud. Now his shoulders peak a little higher, for Athair is looking at him, talking to him, and speaking more calmly than he has since Maedhros’s gunshot—useless as it was—split the night.

“They built the bridge?”

“They did.” Athair nods towards it. There is an affection in his eyes for the cunning design that makes Curufin almost wonder if he has seen it before—but no, Athair has never gone west. “You see only a sparse-grown hill, do you not? Yet Mithrim lies beyond it.”

“Mithrim is the name of his fort?”

“Of the river and the lake downstream, too.” Athair draws up his reins again, and they ride on. Curufin makes sure to nudge his horse ahead so that he passes over the bridge before any of his brothers, even Maedhros.

No sooner has Athair’s horse set foot on the ground on the other side than a dozen men spring from behind those bushes—not so sparse, when seen up close—with guns and bows drawn. Some are native men, others are as pale as the Feanorians, and still others are dark-skinned like the freemen Curufin sometimes saw in New York. Two of them are not men at all, but women in breeches, with their long hair knotted back.

One of the native men steps forward, an arrow set loosely against his bow. When he speaks, he does so in the same tongue that Athair and the stranger knew.

Athair answers, and then in English, he says, “But you should not trust those words, my friends, though I am the one created them along with your leader. Your code has been broken. Send for Rumil; I will allow none but him to identify me.”

There is a hush; the guards confer. The long train of their own party stretches out over the bridge, and waits on the near side of the river.

Athair is noble, Curufin thinks, and wise. How many other men would admit to being a threat, to those they wished to join and take hospitality from?

_How many other men could do anything he does?_

(His hand shook, yes, when he fired and the man fell. But Athair lives, he _lives_ , and that is enough.)

“This is Rumil’s land,” the leader of squad says, when he has sent one of his fellows running back down the hill. “If you take a step farther, without his bidding, we shall kill you.”

(What did Athair teach him to hold a gun for, if not for this? What did Athair mean when he said _aim for the vital organs_ —)

But this time, Athair nods his assent. Athair, when told that they will be fired upon, says only, “We wait here,” and does exactly that.

 

The bridge is an excellent way to fortify one’s land, Curufin sees. If men may only cross singly, they can be picked off one by one.

That, and the steel slats would not burn.

 

Over the hill at last comes a man in a long linen coat. His breeches and boots are soft leather, almost like the natives wear. His skin is dark. The hair curling on his head is turning grey.

When will Athair’s hair begin to grey? Will Curufin’s wait long, too—until even age seems like it is cheating itself to let him conquer excess time in the pursuit of excess passions?

(He can think these things, and then he can be sick somewhere around the corners of his eyes, just out of reach, and it has been like this every day, since.)

 

“Rumil,” Athair says. “I understand that if I take a step farther, your men will kill me.”

“ _Feanor_.” Rumil’s face creases, as if joy and grief are fighting within him. It is a look Curufin has only ever seen on his mother’s face.

He decides that he does not like Rumil.

Athair seems to, though, even though Rumil’s next words are—“You should not have come.”

 

They are over the bridge, and over the hill, and there they come upon a fort of stone, cobbled and mortared, that crouches so close to the rise of ground that it almost seems to Curufin to wear a cover of earth as a tortoise wears a shell.

“This, and your bridge, have kept us safe for now,” Rumil is saying to Athair. Athair has dismounted—they all have—and they lead their horses by the reins acoss rust-colored flagstones.

Curufin thinks— _your bridge?_ —but he says nothing. The others are not near enough to hear.

Athair is telling Rumil of the intruder in the forest. Rumil’s face falls, as if a mask has been set over it. “Annatar,” he says. “Whom we now know as Mairon. Did you not receive my letter? I dared not hope that it would turn you back, but—”

The letter, as it happens, was sent to Ulmo’s Bridge. Some of the others _do_ hear that—at least, Curufin thinks that Maedhros does, and Maglor too, from the way they seem to stiffen and then recede into their own thoughts, not wanting to draw Athair’s attention.

“We left quickly,” Athair says, almost dismissively. Curufin would like to see his brother’s faces, each in turn, to observe how they bear the memory brought so near.

“My old friend,” Rumil says, with a sad smile, “News _does_ reach us here. I wished my letter to find you, if only to prepare you—but we know, also, of the fall of Ulmo’s Bridge. It must have arrived thereafter.”

They are at the barred doors of the stone fort. Athair, who has seemed remarkably easy in Rumil’s company, towers now in waiting, with all the tension of a rising storm.

“You know how hounded we have been by Bauglir and his minions, then.” Rumil’s men, and Athair’s men, and Athair’s _sons_ listen breathlessly for the answer.

And Rumil, for his part, shrugs. “We are all outlaws here,” he says, and unlocks the door.

There is no more mention of Ulmo’s Bridge.

 

So Rumil was a slave once. Curufin doesn’t yet know the whole story, though his eyes are drawn to the scar-tissue that rises angrily above his linen collar.

It makes him think of the mark on Maedhros’s neck.

 _When will you put an end to this?_ Maglor asked that night, when he followed Maedhros out across the undulating sand, and Curufin (some paces back) followed them both. _Or will you let him use you whenever he sees fit, no matter how it hurts you?_

 _Careful, Maglor_ , Maedhros said, almost coldly. Instead of facing Maglor, he faced the stars. _Not another mutiny._

Maglor laughed a choking sort of laugh, which meant that he was on the verge of tears. Maglor cried easily, Curufin knew, whether he was twelve or twenty-one. _So I have to watch you destroy yourself?_

You _keep bringing me back_. Maedhros wheeled on him, so sharply that Curufin abandoned his own plan to spy and tease out more information about whose teeth, exactly, had torn his brother’s skin. _You should be able to stomach how I choose to live afterwards._

 _Are you?_ Maglor sounded truly hysterical now. _Choosing to live?_ Curufin could not remember the last time they fought like this, nor was he able to cherish a moment’s satisfaction at it. Instead, the validation of their weaknesses had settled like handful of gravel in the pit of his stomach. It would scrape him raw.

No answer, from Maedhros, had been answer enough. Maglor had crumpled to the sand with his face in his hands, and Curufin had seen the way Maedhros sighed, shaken head to foot, only to sink down beside him, tugging Maglor’s hands away from his face and swiping at the tears with his fingers and saying,

 _Why must_ you _destroy yourself over me? Macalaure, enough. Enough._

They had each other. Curufin stood, alone. He closed his eyes and thought of Athair, left alone by Mother, left alone by his own brilliance, left alone by the lies that other people believed. He ran back to camp before his brothers could see him.

 

Rumil’s fort—where twenty-two men and women already keep their quarters—will scarcely hold them all. Athair proposes tents to be set up outside, only to learn that they have been under constant fear of inspection by the _orc_ —a word that Curufin does not recognize—and of attacks by Mairon.

 _Mairon_. Curufin would rather not think of those animal eyes, and so he pushes the memory away, deep into a place that only nightmares can reach.

There is a room with windows where he and his father and brothers will stay. This December night will be the first they spend beneath a roof in months.

He feels, quite suddenly, choked with panic. He looks around—is Celegorm here? For Athair cannot see him _like this_ , and Celegorm is the only one who will not force him to meet his gaze, but will instead be a stupid brute and he _needs_ that, needs—

The moment passes. Curufin digs his nails into his palms and breathes.

Athair has left him; has circled through Rumil’s wary followers, pressing their hands into his, promising to see to new fortifications and new designs, speaking boldly of protection and retribution. Some of them, he seems to know.

 _This, and_ your _bridge, have kept us safe for now…_

Curufin sinks down beside his battered pack. He is hungry, and smells of cooking reach him, but he does not move. Athair brought them here with an army of his own making. His sons will be his captains, won’t they? Curufin will not leave him.

Curufin will not, at the moment, do anything.  

The journey is done. The journey is done. To scrabble for more than the stilling numbness he feels would be to show desperation.  

He rests his elbows on his knees and his forehead on his hand.

“Curufin.”

It is Athair’s voice.

He looks up—the light has changed, shifted, darkened. Is it night? Was he asleep?

Athair smiles at him, the same smile that Curufin can feel in a warm curve against his hair, his cheek, when he was very small and Athair used to carry him snugly in his arms.

“I have something to show my sons,” Athair says. “But especially you.”


	4. Maglor

Rumil’s windowless study is wallpapered with maps. Maglor supposes that stones lie beneath the colored parchments, but he cannot see them, and almost does not wish to. Surely stone can have no more beauty than the blue veins of rivers, the swirling script, the marching rickrack of mountains. More states are outlined than are currently chartered, and more cities marked than Maglor expected. He could study these for hours; could use the unknown names as words within lyrics, within poems.

Celegorm also surveys them with eager interest—an interest Maglor thought unrenewed since Athair’s secret maps outstripped Celegorm’s efforts at making one.

 _We could mark our progress here_ , Maglor realizes, noting that Rumil’s cartography spans east coast to west. Then he supposes that they would have to mark it in red.

It is after supper—a meal taken with Rumil’s followers, who are the most fearsome collection of people that Maglor has ever met. A few are as young as Caranthir, but it is hard to tell—they have none of his little brothers’ softness.

 _What softness?_ It sounds like Curufin, in Maglor’s mind.

Rumil shuts the door behind them all—even the twins are here—and double-bolts it. Next, he moves to stand behind his desk. The desk is massive, carved with lines as fine and intricate as those that trace the maps.

“How much do they know?” Rumil asks Athair, and Maglor bristles at the smug curve of Athair’s smile.

“Nothing.”

 _Why must you keep secrets even from your own sons?_ He wants to shout. _What good has it done us?_

Athair remembers so much, and forgets everything else.

He complained of this to Maedhros once, long ago. One September, when they had left another Formenos summer behind, Athair rode down to New York to spend two days with them. It was then that he informed them that he would not send Celegorm to school in the city, though he insisted that they remain there. Maglor would have grieved to leave his music, so he was not pained on that account, but Maedhros—

Maedhros, whose studies occupied just enough of his time to keep his schoolmasters and Athair impressed, had borne the dictate silently, except for a few murmured _yes, sir_ ’s, which meant he was angry but wouldn’t show it. Maedhros’s rebellions, which usually consisted of withholding his affections, were short-lived.

Athair never even noticed them.

“You might have asked him _why_ ,” Maglor sputtered, when Athair departed the next morning, leaving Maedhros and Maglor to share a cold breakfast after early Mass.

 “Are you not happy,” Maedhros asked, “To stay in the city?” He was pouring coffee, and it spilled upon the saucer when his hand jiggled, but his tone was almost bland.

“I do, but that does not mean I do not want to know _why_ Celegorm may not come. Why will Athair not tell us his reasons? Whom does he distrust?” The answer, Maglor feared, was _Fingolfin_ , but he wasn’t going to say that to Maedhros.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Maedhros said slowly, as if Maglor was too stupid to understand, “That the less we know, the safer we are?” He was not eating, not really. Not like Maglor was. Maedhros always picked at his food in the first few weeks of September, and never more so than after a visit from Athair. He added, “If we know nothing, nothing can be wrung out of us, come to that.”

“Those are not the same thing at all!” Maglor answered, discomfited. “Being safe and—and—” He did not want to think of a world where anyone was wringing Athair’s secrets from his sons.

 

Now, he looks at Maedhros because he always looks at Maedhros. Maedhros is as calm and still as he was when he rebuttoned his collar, that day in the desert. It is a memory in its own right, and one that stokes Maglor’s anger even now. Maedhros’s chin is held at an angle that some would call _arrogant_ , but that Feanor’s sons call _proud_.

“What we are about to show you,” Athair says, looking fierce with improbable joy, “Is the heart of our family. Of my work. Secrecy is absolute.” He gazes upon each one of them in turn—a craftsman’s gaze, in that moment, more than a father’s. “Do you all swear never to reveal what you see, and what you know?”

“On pain of death?” Curufin asks, eyes glittering, and Maglor desires—as fierce as Athair’s joy—to crash a fist into his younger brother’s teeth.

_I can see the future too, you know. Only, I do not try to hasten it._

“Let us hope it does not come to that,” Athair says, his lips quirking at the corners, but his eyes fading grave.

(Athair believes he sees the future, too, just like Maglor and Curufin. It may be that all of them are lying.)

Rumil passes a hand over his face.

“We swear,” Curufin says, lightning quick, and Maedhros flushes a little, before adding, very quietly, “We swear.”

The rest nod. Maglor feels as if he might be sick. Will he be the son to next shame their father, kneeling in his own vomit? He could shudder at the thought.

Athair lights a lantern—one small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, but flaring bright thanks to the reflective panels at its sides—and begins to speak, low and rolling, like water tumbling over river-stones.

“Almost twenty years ago,” he says, “Rumil and I parted as friends while he journeyed west. Ten years ago, he wrote me of a discovery, in this land—which you find now to be far from our past home, and in every way, its better.” He sets the lantern down upon the desk. “I was keen to help him, but Bauglir was watching me closely. For this reason, I told no one where I traveled, or why.”

_I will find him. I will find him, Nerdanel._

Bauglir with the carven smile and his hands on Maedhros’s frightened face. Bauglir looking for Athair, and none of them even knowing where Athair _was_.

That year—the darkest they had known, before this one, lays open like a chasm no longer. Athair’s words fill it.

( _If we know nothing, nothing can be wrung out of us, come to that._ )

“I went west alone,” Athair explains, as if they will be gladdened to learn a long-evaded solution. “I traveled by roads charted and uncharted, often in disguise. When I arrived, Rumil had not yet built Mithrim.”

“The land belonged to someone else,” Rumil says, almost wryly.

“Ah yes.” Athair’s smile is less wry than it is triumphant. When Athair’s mind is filled with dreams, Maglor knows, he leaves no room there for grief or doubt.

His sons are not like that.

“There is a land-claimer in these parts,” Athair says. “A Spaniard. Thingol is his name; he sold this plot to Rumil, shortly before my arrival.”

“In exchange for rewards he never received.”

“That is an old quarrel, Rumil,” Athair returns gently. “Do not worry over it now. Does he still plague you over the terms?”

“No—for years he threatened to retake the land, treating only with those of my men who speak Spanish, as you know is his wont. These days, he is more concerned with showing his strength against the O.R.C.”

“As he should be. I like not these _invaders_. Government-approved, of course—the worst of men always are.” Athair’s lip curls, and then he returns to his story. Athair will always return to what he wishes to say. Grandfather Finwe used to jest that he would outlive God for the sake of a finished sentence. Maglor almost believes that. “Rumil suspected that treasure lay beneath this land, as did Elu Thingol—though he had not the skill to discover it, as I did.”

Athair and Rumil move to the triptych map on the far wall of the room, and together, they each press a hand against the mirrored image of a lake detailed on the first and third panels.

Rumil’s desk launches forward on silent treads, moving at least a yard across the smooth floor. The twins yelp and back away.

In the space beneath it—Maglor can see because he, like all his brothers, have sidled around to peer into the darkness—runs a staircase, disappearing under the ground.

The air that rises is cool and not quite stale.

“Follow me,” Athair says, and takes up the lantern to lead.

 

They lie too close to their brothers for Maglor to say a word. There had been one bedframe, but Athair would not take it for himself, and instead suggested that it be moved out altogether, to leave more room for the lot of them. Athair has not yet left his latest council with Rumil, but he bid his sons to rest.

Where the other miners are, where Galway and Homer and the horses are, Maglor scarcely knows. He is awake only in one part of his mind.

And that is the part that wants very badly to ask, _are you angry too, Maitimo?_

That is also the part that believes Maedhros will answer him.

 

(Down the steps, into clammy blackness, Athair’s lantern the only light. There were peaked formations like monstrous canine teeth, high or higher than Maglor’s head, and above them, more dripped to shut the jaws of the cavern.

“Stalactites and stalagmites,” muttered Celegorm, as if anyone had asked.

When Maglor had counted a hundred steps, then a hundred more, Athair paused. Rumil lit the torch he carried.

He lifted it up, and they all saw how deep, how very deep, they were within the earth. There was not even the sound of water, much less the hint of wind. This was darkness; this was quiet.

This was a torch, and Athair, burning brighter than the torch.

Slowly, they turned on their heels, breath held in their throats.

 _A cathedral_ , Maglor thought, but instead of windows, instead of glimpses of sky, there were only cold gem-glints in the cragged walls.)

 

His brothers sleep (or do not sleep) like this: Celegorm with his hands twined in Huan’s coat, one of Huan’s floppy ears splayed across his cheek. Caranthir sleeps so heavily that all his limbs fall limp. Curufin curls up like a grub protecting its belly from the prod of a foot, or any inquiry but his own.

(Maglor is still angry at Curufin.)

The twins face each other, if they are on happy terms. If they fight, they turn their indignant, quivering backs, but they still stay close.

Habits like that are hard to break.

Maglor is not asleep because he is angry, so terribly, _tragically_ angry, and Maedhros is not asleep because he is—

Flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. At least he has a pillow beneath his head, as they all do. Rumil was generous with his supplies, and they are warm under fresher blankets than they have known since—well, since Formenos. After all, the only night that Maglor spent under a roof was inside a horse’s stall.

Maedhros breathes through his nose. His hands are laced together and resting on his chest.

If they were younger, or happier, Maglor would reach for his nearest wrist. He used to do that when they were small, when Celegorm was the baby and they were relegated to the empty bedroom far away from Athair and Mother’s. Maglor would leave his bed and climb into Maedhros’s larger one, and he would hold Maedhros’s wrist in both hands, and Maedhros would rest his chin on Maglor’s head.

 _Diamonds_ , Maglor would say, if they were alone. _It was all for diamonds. Goddamn him, and all of us._

(“The finest specimens in this part of the world,” Athair crowed, taking Rumil’s torch so that he could wave it slowly from side to side, and show them the wide lay of the cave, show them every winking eye. “Never has it been discovered by any other.” His voice, as mercurial as all the rest of him, flooded with sudden grief, and over the grief ran rage, which he preferred to hold when grief seemed too much for his heart’s facets to cleave. “Your grandfather died for that gem,” he spat. The torchlight showed them all—pale pinched Curufin, Celegorm with his arms folded awkwardly, the bloody corner of Maedhros’s lips. “We, instead, shall live for them. The riches of this land—of this cavern—are what make men like Rumil free and safe.”

Freedom and safety, Maglor thought, were not the same thing.)

 

“They are asleep, Macalaure.”

It is barely above a whisper. On the other side of the room, Huan huffs a breathy dog-sigh. Celegorm is snoring.

“What?”

Maedhros turns onto his side. “Say what you want to. I can feel your thoughts eating at your mind.”

Maglor feels a twinge of something else than pain. Hope? That Maedhros, too, wishes to give vent to how Athair’s—

_—treachery, but no, no, you cannot think so—_

 “I am angry.”

“Mm. I know.”

If Curufin wakes and snoops…but Maglor thrusts aside the risk, too grateful for the return of Maedhros’s confidences. He props himself on his elbow, so that he can see how Maedhros’s features remain familiar in the shadows and window-light.

“He left us, once. This time, he left Mother, and…”

“He didn’t leave Mother.” Maedhros reaches up to rake his hair off his forehead, so that his hand conceals his face as he says it. “Mother left _us_ , Maglor. And she was right to.”

That hurts to much for Maglor to speak to. Instead, he says,

“I don’t care about gems. I don’t care about gold.”

“So noble. That could be the beginning of a love-song.”

“Do not mock me,” Maglor feels himself shifting into a whine, but whines can be heard (as well as being ungraceful), and so he lowers his voice again. “How are we to bear this?”

“With an oath.” Maedhros’s hand darts out, as if he would rest it on Maglor’s shoulder in comfort, but then he stops himself. This version of Maedhros always stops himself short of seeking contentment, just as this version of Maglor is weak in a thousand new ways. “Macalaure”— _and why that name? Does he think it will be persuasive? (He is right)_ —“It is not about whatever diamonds Athair dug up ten years ago.”

“Did you tell him that?” Maglor asks sourly.

Maedhros’s voice is tilted by a smile that Maglor cannot see. “I am telling you.”

 

(So Athair left them in Formenos, with the twins still in their training dresses, with wolves flocking to their door, with Mother counting every potato and every sack of grain. Athair concerned himself with land so far-flung that his sons could not imagine it until it spread out in front of their very eyes. Athair purposed for his family a trail of mountains and heartache, even before he readily killed to make that trail their indispensable future.

All of this, for a land of plenty. A very empty land.

Maglor loves Athair, and Athair is dreadfully cruel.)

 

“Then what,” Maglor—Macalaure, only to this best-beloved brother now—asks, “was it about?”

“Us,” Maedhros says, which is not the first lie he has said gently in the dark, but certainly among the worst. “He wanted to give us a new life.”

(Maglor remembers their quarrel in the desert. Remembers how he broke first, as he always does—with sobs and words like misspent matches, guttering into black ash. Where is the politic musician he once dreamed of being? Where is the man who could smile on the world with understanding, even of its pain, that he one day believed he would be?

Was that man killed so that another might have new life?)

Maedhros, being already broken, always expects Maglor to break first. He martyrs himself on Athair’s absurd, magnificent altars, and then, when Maglor suffers as Maedhros will not, Maedhros talks him back from the ledge as if such suffering is foolish and wasteful.

Not tonight. Not tonight—for Maglor remembers every mile, every moment, that stretches between them and Mother, them and murder, them and Athair’s altars littered like bones along the way.

“Sometimes,” Maglor hisses, in the dark, “I hate you as much as I hate him.”

(Which is to say, _not at all_ , but Maedhros does not know that.)


	5. Maedhros

The New Year comes with more celebration than Maedhros expected. The Mithrim rebels honor it as a marker of their survival, though they own that this night is more somber than in the past.

They burn a bundle of pine for each companion they lost in twelve months gone, repeating each name over the flames. The sweet scent rises in smoke and flicker, stinging the back of Maedhros's throat. Whom would he count? Those he killed, or those he left? 

(Better to burn a bundle for himself.)

There is meat, and there are raisin-studded loaves of bread, and there is wine—full bottles of sweet wine, heady and ripe. The party becomes rather merry. Maedhros drinks until he cannot stand. 

Someone leads him to bed—it is only when he wakes the next morning that he can be grateful that it was one of his brothers. He is in their own quarters and he is still fully dressed, except for his boots, tumbled beside him.

He mumbles his thanks to Maglor through a pounding headache and a sour mouth, but Maglor says tightly, "I was minding the twins, not dragging you along the hall. Thank Celegorm."

Maedhros does not thank Celegorm.

He expects, too, a dressing-down from Athair, but Athair is busy planning how best to beat back the _orcs_ , which is what everyone has taken to calling the government's hired soldiers. Rumil wants diplomacy; Athair seems to be itching for a skirmish.

And so no one has any interest in Maedhros’s drunkenness. Sin is like that—hardly interesting to other people, after a time. Maglor, having decided to hate him (a wise decision, if Maedhros is being honest) means that he no longer nags. 

January marches on. Much changes, and much is exactly as he might once have dreamt it—they live in a wild new world of Athair’s making, even if he made it in secret and from afar.

(Curufin goes down to the mines with Athair almost daily. None of them speak of it, outside of Rumil’s study. None of the rest of them want to.)

Rumil accepts Athair, and Rumil’s company accepts their new allies. Some of the women—hard-boned and fierce as the men—seem eager enough to make Maedhros’s closer acquaintance. He is not without such yearnings (for also after a time, sin becomes easier). Still, he will not cause trouble for Athair by fraternizing with their hosts, and so he doesn't.

At least the wine is in deep supply. Wine, and whiskey.

The miners and ranchers who accompanied them from Beleriand were promised gold, and more than half have already departed for the busy quarries of Sutter’s Mill. But others—a dozen or so—are impressed by Rumil’s efforts at independence, his offers to fit them into the Mithrim quarters, and decide to stay.

Those are the reasons they give. At the core of it, though, Maedhros knows they are impressed all the more by Athair. _That_ should surprise no one, least of all him.

Athair deserves a greater title than _admirable_ ; he is also generous. The men who left took with them the deeds Athair had once intended for himself and his family. The men who remain share in the riches he takes at once to creating, though none of those riches reveal diamonds.

“We are outlaws now,” he said, when he gave the deeds away, as if it were quite an ordinary thing to say. “And the government will not honor our hold of those lands.”

Yet he smiled to himself, and now for weeks, in between his time in the growing forge, he has compared documents with Rumil in the privacy of Rumil’s chambers. Sometimes Maedhros stands by and listens; sometimes not.

It is clear that Athair feels not at all the loss of a chance at digging for metal. Not when there are diamonds to be had.

 

Maedhros went to see Fingon over that. Over gold. He charmed the ancient housekeeper, let himself into the family parlor, and lay upon the sofa as if he lived there—but only because he knew his aunt and uncle were at dinner. Fingolfin’s trust had been hard-won at the best of times; by April of last year, of course, Maedhros was only stitching back together its tatters.

It is laughable, now, to think of Fingolfin’s trust. Maedhros could bite his tongue in two, trying to keep from laughing.

 _Fingolfin_ , Athair would say—if Athair spoke his name— _is a fool_. A fool to trust Maedhros, certainly.  

Fingon was too.

He does not want to think of Fingon now. Fingon, who, a year ago mid-January presented him with an elaborate hatbox as a belated Christmas gift—and when Maedhros raised an inquiring brow, said hastily,

"Do be careful lifting the lid. It might blow your fingers off."

"A remarkable topper, then," Maedhros had laughed, and he had been overly cautious about unwinding the ribbons. He was not at all surprised that the box was full of firecrackers. Fingon, ever-serious when it came to his studies and his dreams, was wildly whimsical in his gift-giving. They set them off over the East River, with cold air snapping at their cheeks and sparks raining star-like from above.

Maedhros has to still a smile at that, and then he realizes that he has indulged himself, as is ever the inclination of his vices—he has let himself remember fondness ( _comfort_ ) where now there can be none.

Better for one such as him to think of Fingon as Maedhros found him a month later, perched in an armchair with his arms wrapped around his knees, looking very much younger than twenty.

"What is it?" Maedhros asked, sinking down on the floor beside him with the kind of older-brother concern he had still fancied genuine in those days.

"I have failed in my mission," Fingon said gravely. The words might have applied to many things—settling a spat between Aredhel and Turgon, who were not prone to maturity, even though they were nearly grown-up; neglecting to complete a treatise for Olorin; or something else that would have mattered not at all to Maedhros had not it mattered greatly to Fingon.

What was more, Fingon's face was streaked and damp. He had not wept in Maedhros's sight since the funeral. There had been scarcely a dry eye there, Maedhros's included.

"Your mission?"

The story tumbled out in mismatched pieces. Fingon was very different than Maglor in that respect—he cared not for the artfulness of tragedy.

“There was a woman—” he began. “You will not tell Father?”

 _When have I ever told your father anything_ , Maedhros thought, then, but he said aloud, “Of course not.”

“Olorin has shown me so much of the world. So many people whom—whom I would otherwise disdain, were I to walk past them in neat clothes or ride by in a carriage. On my way to Mass, do I give a coin to the man who begs on the corner? Or do I shoulder by, saving that coin for the collection plate?”

Maedhros was silent.

“When you have washed their sores and heard their stories, you feel nothing but shame. That is what Dr. Olorin has taught me. But today, I—” He took another breath. “Today I found more in myself than shame. We—we visited a woman of ill repute.”

Only Fingon would say it like that.

“She was dying.” Fingon shook his head. He had not unwrapped his arms from his knees, nor had he lost the deep furrow between his straight dark brows. “And I—I _judged_ her. I felt disgust for her. After all of Olorin’s teaching! After so much discovery of my own lowliness, there was _still_ pride in me.”

“What did you do?” Maedhros asked. He barely dared to breathe.

“I stroked her hair,” Fingon answered. “And I asked her if she wished to pray, and she did.” He blinked up at the ceiling. He was crying again—the family doctor since his early teens, older than half the world in kindness, younger in all else. “The sickness was in her lungs; they were almost gone. Olorin made her comfortable, and bade me to stay with her. She died with me holding her, feeling such…such _disgust_ , even while I prayed.” He lifted his arms at last, only to sob into his hands.

“Fingon,” said Maedhros, searching desperately for a handkerchief. He found one, and passed it up to the armchair. “Fingon.”

“What?” Fingon asked, still rather muffled.

“She did not know.” His lips were numb. “She did not know that you—she only knew that you were with her.”

“Truly?” Fingon swiped at his eyes again, crushing the handkerchief in his hand. “I will curse myself _forever_ , Maitimo, to think that I marred a patient’s last moments with my own cruel conceits.”

Maedhros bit back a smile. It was not one of amusement, only of affection, but he did not wish to risk a misunderstanding. “I am sure, _cano_. She died in the kindest arms I know.”

All this reassurance, to bring color back to Fingon’s cheeks and tease out the beginnings of a watery grin.  As if Maedhros was not guilty of a hundred sins that Fingon did not know: foolish, risky things that begged for punishment. Caught in bed with a banker’s daughter—his _uncle’s_ banker, no less. That, only a month after he was chased from the grounds of a councilman’s home, where he had been discovered climbing from a window.

Did he wish for Fingon to know? For _Athair_?

There is only one thing he can say for certain, nine months and three thousand miles away: he has not learned.

(Not just the lives he spent with bullets. Not just the parade of women and their secrets and their devouring mouths. He allowed it all, and called it duty—just as he used to call it distance, when the only stain he sought to cover with brighter shades was that of a broken heart.)

The wound on his neck has healed and scarred. He did not allow _that_ , but he allowed her to lead him to her room, and claw at his hair and skin, and he allowed her to do much worse, even before she smothered him into darkness.

Sometimes he wishes he could scratch it open, scratch it deeper, until it bleeds too much for turning back. Then he recovers, disgraced once more by the threat of self-indulgence, and reminds himself to be grateful for Athair’s forgiveness, for Athair’s willingness to give higher purpose to what they both know is base.

It is a whore’s mark, as sure as any that sets apart women in New York, or Kansas territory, or the rest of the world. Maedhros knows he bears it because a murderer eventually becomes deadened by each pull of the trigger, and a user is, inevitably, the thing used.

 _Such disgust_ , in Fingon’s voice. _Even while I prayed._

 

“I don’t hate you, you know,” Maglor mumbles. They are fitting together weapons—Athair has set them to work repairing every cracked stock and twisted barrel in the place.

Maedhros expects relief. But it has been a little too long; he feels nothing.

He smiles, he puts his hand on Maglor’s shoulder. “Has that been gnawing at you?”

A poor choice of words, but Maglor, at least, is content.

 

Athair steps over whatever sons still sleep at his early rising, and says, “We shall have our own lodgings soon.”

Maedhros wonders where such lodgings will be, and assumes Athair means only another room of the Mithrim fort. It does not seem to be of great concern to Athair, anyway; he is more worried over government intrusion—and even that, as only a thin cover for his concern about the approaching forces of Bauglir.

“Perhaps we shall live on the edge of the lake,” Amras suggests, when the twins discuss it. They discuss most things, even those that deeply pain them. Maedhros has heard enough of their whispered conversations to know.

“If we lived on the edge of the lake,” Curufin points out, “We’d all fall in. And drown.” He grins like a shark.

“That would be an improvement,” grumbles Caranthir, his nose buried in one of Rumil’s precious books, and Maedhros looks up quickly to catch his eye, almost smiling.

Almost.

 

Athair disappears into the forge—already it is called _Feanor’s forge_ , though it was Rumil and his company who beat horseshoes and bars and stakes in it for nigh on a decade—for a full week. When he returns, he smells distinctly of gunpowder, and the lingering tang of hot metal.

“Now, Rumil,” he says at dinner (and this is a mystery too, how Athair addresses his speeches only to his sons and his old friend, and yet every ear in the place turns toward him). “You may wreathe your land in endless fire, if you wish it.”

Rumil sets down his cup. Maedhros thinks the smile on his face is a weary one, but that is only because Rumil has suffered—his every mood is weary now. “Why should I wish it?”

“When Mairon returns,” Athair says, his lip curling, “Or the loathsome soldiers, you will no longer have to hide.”

Maedhros was in the forest, that lonely Christmas night.

Maedhros stepped out of hiding—and what good did it do?

 

“You are rarely in the mines,” Athair says to him one day, looking up from a map with eyes and eyebrows alone, so that they arch and strain like wings. “Do you not care for my heart?”

Does he speak in jest? Maedhros’s chest aches.

Rumil clears his throat.

“Come down with me tomorrow,” Athair offers briskly, folding up the map. It outlines the foothills to the southeast—Athair swears he has seen smoke rising from them, and desires to send out a party to investigate. Rumil disagrees as to the safest route. They have been arguing for hours—Athair intensely, and Rumil gently—and Maedhros was called in to advise, though neither of them have asked him any questions.

“If you wish it,” Maedhros answers, as if he does not hate all that the ground beneath them holds.

(What else is there, even, to say, to think? He is everything that Fingon would despise, that his mother would recoil from. They have spoken to him too honestly, in times past, for him to doubt their true feelings—even if long-rooted love drove them to lift a mask of brittle compassion. He held two letters printed with their names close by him for months; he dipped his hands into his pockets and felt the ink on the crumpling paper. He knew when he wrote them, and how much (or how little) he hoped, then.

 _She_ burned them, and maybe after all, he did allow it. Maybe he has allowed everything that has ever happened to him.)

 

Athair’s hand is on his shoulder. He is so grateful for it, even now. Grateful as he was when Athair touched his cheek, his hair; grateful as he should have been when Athair asked him to reveal his shame and sharpen it to vengeance.

“They are rough stones, still,” Athair murmurs. He is quietest when he is in wonderment—and yet that is also when he burns so bright Maedhros thinks he scarcely needs the lantern in his hand. “They require a guiding hand to form them.”

It will not be Maedhros’s. That is all he knows. He bites his tongue, not to keep from laughing.

The diamonds in the walls bite back.

 

Curufin is furious. His eyes are as hard as Athair’s beloved gems, and he sits with his back to the window-frame and his knees tucked up against his chest.

Celegorm has tried reasoning, Maglor tried scolding—once—and now they all walk around him as if on tiptoe.

 _What about Curufin?_ Athair asked that morning.

 _Jesus Christ, Feanor, he’s fifteen_ , is what Mother had said once, when Athair proposed that Maedhros keep house in Valinor Park during the first year of his city-schooling. It was rare that Mother should take the Lord’s name in vain.

Maedhros imagined saying it now, the same words, but he didn’t. He said only, _Celegorm is better at tracking_ , and Athair nodded.

Maedhros fastens his gunbelt on his hips, fills his flask and tucks it in his pocket. He tells himself he’ll use it for bullet wounds, but the truth is, he’ll drink before they are halfway there.

 _There_ is an unknown; _there_ is Athair’s suspicion of smoke.

When he passes Curufin, his younger brother speaks.

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

The others have left the room—Maglor to find breakfast for the twins, Celegorm to whistle for Huan, who loves this land more than most of them, and ambles over hill and dale chasing new winds. It is only Curufin, Caranthir, and Maedhros.

“What do you mean?” Maedhros asks levelly.

Curufin cocks his head. He looks like a hawk when he does that—too beaked, with Athair’s nose sharpened in his thin face. “You told Athair to keep me behind.”

“We are hunting.”

“I can hunt.”

“I know you can, but Athair intended to send only two of us, and Celegorm has Huan.” He is explaining too much.

“I did not say,” Curufin retorts softly, smiling, “That _Celegorm_ should not go.”

Maedhros knows he should have been expecting this. He must force himself from his constant stupor—his near-constant drink—and learn to anticipate his brothers’ breaking. “In my stead, then?”

“The last time you went on one of Athair’s missions, you let some bitch chew you half to death.” Curufin scoffs a faint laugh as he says it, and his long fingers—so like Athair’s too, as are the rest of his bones—tap staccato on his bent knee.

Maedhros is vaguely aware of Caranthir’s sharp indrawn breath.

He is vaguely aware of a great many things.

His hand does not stray to his throat, to the mark that Curufin can see there, pocked above the line of his shirt collar. To cover what half the men and all his brothers have now seen seems a foolish risk in its own way.

It is all a matter of what one will allow. “Athair’s orders, Curufin,” he says. “Are they yours—or mine—to disobey?”

His brother does not answer. The fey light goes out of his eyes and there he is, a child, with a hero’s bones. They were all made in so many images—if they believe in God, as some of them still do, they have two fathers.

One above, and one on earth. Disobedience to either means death with near-certainty, death as a punishment or as a just reward.

It is only a matter of time.


End file.
